Louis XVI's final testament discovered

Louis XVI's final testament written shortly before his execution has been recovered more than two centuries after it disappeared during the French Revolution.

Louis XVI was found guilty of treason and guillotined in 1793

By Henry Samuel in Paris

4:56PM BST 20 May 2009

The king wrote the "Declaration to all the French" the day before fleeing Paris in 1791.

With Marie-Antoinettte, he tried to reach the royalist fortress town of Montmédy on the northeastern border of France, but was arrested at Varennes-en-Argonne and brought back to the French capital.

The royal couple were imprisoned, and during Louis' trial, the declaration was cited by prosecutors as proof that he wanted to "plunge France into the horrors of civil war".

He was found guilty of treason and guillotined in 1793.

In the text, Louis accuses revolutionary lawmakers of attacking the "dignity of the French Crown" and defends the king's right to an absolute veto, but he is conciliatory towards demands for social equality.

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"French people and above all Parisians... return to your king," he writes. "He will always be your father, your best friend."

The manuscript disappeared shortly after his death and although its 16-page contents were known via copies, the original was thought lost.

However, Gérard Lhéritier – a French expert in ancient letters and a history buff – was convinced it still existed. He finally traced it to the US after a tip-off from an expert in Boston that it was in the hands of a private American collector. It came with another text from the king's brother, the Count of Provence.

"The collector agreed to part with it in exchange for several million euros," said Mr Lhéritier, whose company Aristophil deals in ancient texts.

"I think that if he'd asked for any more, we would have been obliged to seek money from everywhere to bring it back (to France)." How it reached America remains a mystery, although many French sailed to the New World at that time.

"It's more of a manifesto than a testament; it's the king's last great political text in which he says: this is what I want, this is why I'm leaving," said Jean-Christian Petitfils, a historian and biographer of Louis XVI.

"It is a key text for the history of Louis XVI's reign and notably (his) relationship with the Revolution," he said.

The testament will be on public display by the end of the month at Paris' Museum of Letters and Manuscripts.

"It won't move from France and we will do everything to keep it in the museum," said Mr Lhéritier.